SOURCE: "Zenna Henderson's 'People' and the Quest for Self-Identity," in Extrapolation, Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter, 1986, pp. 320-25.

In the following essay, Erisman declares that in her stories about the People, Henderson "takes one of the most familiar elements of science fiction, the alien encounter, and one of the most familiar elements of all literature, the quest, and makes a profoundly human document, a body of fiction that portrays a people's achieving identity."

Few science fiction series have had the compelling appeal of Zenna Henderson's narratives of "The People." In two books and a handful of uncollected short stories published between 1952 and 1980, Henderson limns the history of an extraterrestrial civilization that, forced to flee its dying planet, finds itself on Earth. Landing in the American Southwest, late in the nineteenth century, the aliens, who call themselves simply "The People," endeavor to adapt to Terran ways and become functioning parts of...